ver.di rejects regional employers' offer

Following a second round of pay negotiations covering federal and local government workers, ver.di has rejected the employers' latest offer. The employers claim the deal is the equivalent of a 5% increase on pay but ver.di argues that in fact by the end of 2009 workers would be worse off than they are today. The employers want a two-year deal with increases of 2.5% from 1 February 2008, 1.0% from 1 October 2008 and 0.5% from 1 March 2009. A further 0.5% in each year would be performance-related and so not available to all workers. Ver.di also criticises the offer because the employers want

The ver.di public services union is campaigning for a major re-grading of the mainly women workers employed in various social, welfare and educational occupations. The union argues that these workers’ occupations have not only been undervalued but their responsibilities and the pressure of work have increased considerably in recent years. In the second round of negotiations on 30 March employer proposals for re-grading were rejected as an outrageous provocation by ver.di which has launched a special website to argue the case for the re-gradings. [Read more at > ver.di (DE)->http://presse.verdi